TY - JOUR
AU - Harman, Elizabeth
AB - ELIZABETH HARMAN Many people face a problem about potentiality: their moral beliefs appear to dictate inconsistent views about the significance of the potentiality to become a healthy adult. Briefly, the problem arises as follows. Consider the following two claims. First, both human babies and cats have moral status, but harms to babies matter more, morally, than similar harms to cats. Second, early human embryos lack moral status. It appears that the first claim can only be true if human babies have more moral status than cats. Among the prop- erties that determine moral status, human babies have no properties other than their potentiality that could explain their having more moral status than cats. So human babies’ potentiality to become adult persons must explain their having more moral status than cats. But then potentiality must raise moral status generally. So early human embryos must have some moral status. It appears that the view that must underlie the first claim implies that the second claim is false. I will advocate a solution to the problem that reconciles these two claims by explaining how potentiality has a particular significance that affects the way that human babies matter morally, but does not affect 
TI - The Potentiality Problem
JF - Philosophical Studies
DO - 10.1023/A:1024469419944
DA - 2004-10-07
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/the-potentiality-problem-3j3bSx9r2k
SP - 173
EP - 198
VL - 114
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -